President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday held a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Astana, Kazakhstan. The two leaders were in the country to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Summit (SCO). Earlier Thursday, Erdoğan held talks with Mongolia’s president and Qatar’s emir. He is expected to address a session of the summit later.
Erdoğan also held talks with Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus, which joined the SCO as a member state on the same day.
The talks focused on bilateral relations, the consequences of the Ukraine-Russia war, and broader regional and global issues.
Erdoğan stressed the need to take decisive steps to end the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, expressing hope that a strong peace framework could put an end to the war.
He reiterated Türkiye’s commitment to pursuing peace and pledged to continue sincere talks with both parties involved in the conflict.
Xi joined Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier on Thursday for a joint statement, calling on the countries to “resist external interference,” while Putin claimed “new centers” of political and economic might were on the rise.
“We should join hands to resist external interference, firmly support each other, take care of each other’s concerns… and firmly control the future and destiny of our countries and regional peace and development in our own hands,” Xi told the summit.
“It is of vital importance to the world that the SCO be on the right side of history and on the side of fairness and justice,” he added.
Türkiye, China share ‘same views’ on Palestine, Ukraine: Xi
Beijing and Ankara share “same or similar views” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Ukrainian crisis, China’s President Xi Jinping said on Thursday during a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
China and Türkiye “should communicate closely” on these issues, Xi said.
Xi and Erdoğan met in the Kazakh capital Astana, on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) leaders.
The discussion on Palestine and Ukraine between the two leaders, who last met in Uzbekistan’s historic city of Samarkand in Sept. 2022, came as Israel’s war on Gaza continued for nearly nine months, killing over 38,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has surpassed more than two years with tens of hundreds dead and millions displaced.
A readout from Beijing said Xi expressed China’s readiness to “strengthen coordination and cooperation” with Türkiye within multilateral frameworks such as the U.N. and G20.
Relations with Türkiye “have maintained a stable development momentum (and) both are major developing countries and members of the Global South,” said the Chinese president.
He noted that the two nations “have a broad consensus in pursuing the development and revitalization of their respective countries and maintaining the norms of international relations.”
“The two sides should support each other in safeguarding core interests, continuously consolidate political mutual trust, promote high-level mutually beneficial cooperation, and promote greater development of China-Türkiye strategic cooperative relations,” he said.
“China supports Türkiye in taking a development path that suits its national conditions,” Xi said, pressing the two sides to expand trade.
He voiced his support for Chinese companies to increase their investments in Türkiye and encouraged more Chinese citizens to visit the country.
The SCO was founded in 2001 but has come to prominence in recent years. Alongside China, Russia and Belarus, its full members are India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
It is intended to be a platform for cooperation in competition with the West, with a focus on security and economics and Central Asia in particular, and claims to represent 40% of the global population and about 30% of its GDP.
Before Erdoğan visited the summit, the president had contacts with the countries members, including his trip to Russia last September. Last year, he also visited Kazakhstan to attend the 10th summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) and Uzbekistan to attend the 16th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).
